Newly elected Unifor national president Lana Payne at the union’s national convention in Toronto on August 10. Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Lana Payne, a former journalist who built her career in labor activism in the Atlantic provinces, was decisively chosen as the new leader of Unifor, replacing embattled former union boss Jerry Dias, after a long and controversial campaign.
She is the first woman to lead Canada’s largest private sector union and had served as Unifor’s secretary-treasurer since 2019. In that role, she guided Unifor through a public ethics crisis that involve Mr. Dias, who found the union had violated its constitution by allegedly receiving a $50,000 payment from a supplier of COVID-19 test kits, in exchange for selling them to union members.
The election is the first contested since Unifor’s founding in 2013 and was held at the union’s fourth convention in Toronto. Mr. Dias was elected president in 2013 and held the position until his abrupt departure this year.
“Today we turn the page, today we will move forward. … We can build working class power throughout our union and across the country. We can be principled and be intelligent in our struggles and we will be,” she told a crowd of more than 1,000 delegates who had gathered for the vote, minutes after she was declared victorious.
Unifor has approximately 315,000 members, including some Globe and Mail employees.
It was a tight race, pitting the former aide of Mr. Dias, Scott Doherty, a long-time trade unionist, against Ms Payne. The ethical scandal of Mr. Dias raised a lot of questions about Unifor’s election, causing significant disunity within the national executive council and among locals. Supporters of Mr. Doherty had publicly accused Ms. Payne of deliberately releasing hundreds of pages of meeting minutes and a summary report of a third-party investigation into Mr. Days to benefit your campaign. They argued that it eroded Unifor’s credibility.
Ms Payne campaigned on a platform of transparency and accountability, promising more scrutiny on issues such as staffing costs and pledging to closely address issues of culture and governance within the union’s top brass. In several campaign speeches before Wednesday’s vote, he emphasized the need for new union leadership that rules “from the bottom up, not from the top down.”
Ms. Payne began working in the labor movement more than three decades ago, with the Fish, Food and Allied Workers in Newfoundland and Labrador, which was part of the Canadian Auto Workers union. Before becoming Unifor’s Atlantic regional director, she was president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labor and wrote a column for the province’s newspaper, The Telegram, for more than 20 years.
“She’s a unifier. Confrontation is the last thing she wants,” said Sid Ryan, a long-time labor leader and former president of the Ontario Federation of Labor who worked closely with Ms. Payne during the his stay in Newfoundland. “She looks at the bigger picture. What’s affecting workers right now and what pressure should we put on corporations and governments?
Mr Doherty had run a campaign that relied heavily on his record as a tough negotiator, telling delegates and members that it was vital the union elected someone with the best skills to negotiate better working conditions in an inflationary environment . But his credibility was damaged by his own connection to the Dias scandal, said Larry Savage, a professor of labor studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Mr Doherty was a close friend and long-time assistant of Mr. days The third-party report, by law firm Turnpenney Milne, found that Mr Doherty had contacted Chris MacDonald, another long-time aide to Mr Dias who was the whistleblower in the whole affair , during the investigation. The report suggested that he pressured Mr. MacDonald to drop the complaint about Mr. Days in the union. Mr Doherty has repeatedly denied this.
“I think Doherty’s campaign was brought down by the scandal,” Professor Savage said. “The union is in a much better position to turn the page on Jerry Dias. If Doherty had won, that would have been an albatross around the union’s neck for much longer,” he added.
A bag of cash and a bottle of cologne: Inside Jerry Dias’ undoing of Unifor
Unifor held the leadership election as the Canadian economy faces a tight labor market, rising inflation and the possibility of a recession. In a press conference shortly after being chosen, Ms. Payne told reporters that Unifor’s priority was to do as much as possible for workers at the bargaining table.
“There is an affordability crisis in this country. Inflation is sky high and we also have a situation with central banks raising interest rates at a rate we haven’t seen in decades. Workers shouldn’t have to pay for everything that. They didn’t cause the problem.”
Voting began at approximately 2 pm ET this Wednesday, with three candidates in contention: Ms. Payne, Mr. Doherty and Unifor Local 444 boss Dave Cassidy.
Unifor’s constitution states that the winning candidate must receive the majority of votes cast. In the first round of voting, Ms. Payne won 46% of the vote, Mr. Doherty 36% and Mr. Cassidy 18%.
Ms Payne was elected national president in the second round of voting, with 61 per cent of the vote. Supporters of the campaign of Ms. Payne – Len Poirier and Daniel Cloutier – were elected secretary-treasurer and director of Quebec, respectively.
“Delegates have made it clear that reaffirming and strengthening Unifor’s commitment to accountability and transparency is a top priority, following the events of recent months,” said Jim Stanford, director of the Vancouver Center for the Future of Work and a former Canadian Auto Workers policy director.
Dr Stanford added that with the leadership race “settled”, the way was clear for Unifor to recommit to good governance practices.
Tony Leah, a former General Motors worker and president of Unifor Local 222 in Oshawa, Ont., told The Globe he hoped the administration of Ms. Payne was open to thinking deeply about the problems facing the union and how to solve them. “It’s not just the Dias scandal. It deals with Unifor’s relationship with the Canadian Labor Congress, retiree pensions, wages and other issues. There’s a lot to do, going forward.”